Christianity in Anime

EmilLang1000 · Post by **EmilLang1000** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 3:31 pm

The comic plays more heavily into Christian faith; SEELE speaks of Gendo attempting to make Shinji into "The Son of God" and making him a Second Christ. The main reason for the heavily Jewish influence, however, comes from the fact that SEELE uses the Dead Sea Scrolls as a guide of how the Third Impact and the Apocalypse will be brought about - in the comic, Kaji says they revere it as "Their Bible" and conspire to make the events prophecized therein come to pass.

Raydar · Post by **Raydar** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:08 pm

*thoughts on Hellsing* GO JESUS!

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:25 pm

oh man than do I have the amv for you! You ever heard Micheal W Smith's 'Too many times'?? I swear. I am THAT close to putting it with Evangelion. I mean Smith even sounds like Shinji ;p Shinji screams 'TOO MANY TIMES!!' over and over and over again, it' just so tempting... But it mentions 'Lord' all of twice. Nothing much as Lord could just mean you superior but... you know.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 7:36 pm

Hmm.. this whole discussion has me thinking about adding another vid to my queue to be made. Chrono Crusade to Stephen Lynch's Priest song... hmmm...

vorx · Post by **vorx** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 4:34 am

And if you believe the whole Judeo-Christian creation story you have to realize that from 1 man and 1 woman the earth was populated; so someone was screwing their sister, daughter, niece, etc. somewhere; and probably more than just a few times.

Believe it or not, there is an explanation for this.

Now, from the viewpoint of the Bible, this is what we find...

In Eden, Adam and Eve were basically able to live forever. After leaving, there were not yet any harmful genetic traits (Seeing as they had no human parents).
A quote from Apologetics Press explains this better than I can...

However, after many generations, and especially after the Noahic Flood (Genesis 6-9), solar and cosmic radiation, chemical and viral mutagens, and DNA replication errors, led to the multiplication of genetic disorders. God protected His people by instituting strict laws against incestuous marriages in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus. Needless to say, more genetic disorders have arisen in the world population since the time of Moses, and thus it is even more important to avoid marrying a close relative.

So the Bible never condemns incest until after the years of the occurrences mentioned above. The REASON it is condemned is because of the genetic disorders, chemical/viral mutagens, etc..

A simple way to think of it is that if you keep making a copy of a copy, the quality will decrease. Now go outside with that copy and throw it around in the dirt, let bacteria and all of that get all over it, get it wet, so on and so forth. Now do you want to use this to make more copies? No, of course not. So in the beginning (no pun intended) the only way to populate the world was with the “original copies” if you will; they were not yet tarnished, they were still mostly pure.

Now please understand that I am only giving the Bible's defense on this subject, not trying to impose my personal beliefs on anyone. Thanks. : )

As for Christianity in anime, I don't really like the idea. Almost any time religion is mixed in, it's distorted quite a bit. I find it wrong to portray ANY religion as incorrectly as anime seems to. But again, I don't let things like that deter me from viewing a series. I've watched and enjoyed Hellsing, I like Go Nagai stuff (Mainly the '98 Shin Getter OAV, which has numerous religious references). It really just boils down to: I prefer it not to be a part of anime, but it's not going to stop me from watching... Unless of course it's extremely, purposefully offensive to religious beliefs, even ones I don't share. Would I watch anime about killing Jews or Muslims, one that was in obvious support of that? No way.

So that's my take on things. My long....long take. o_o

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:48 am

Scientific research suggest that human children of incest don't experence anywhere near the amout of birth defects and medical annomolies as one would be led to believe (from dog inbreeding or religious-based scaremongering for example). It's kinda interesting, shocking even. I figured it would be more as well, but it goes to show you that things like polution and smoking are worse for children than having parents that also happen to be siblings.

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 11:40 am

so let's go for the lesser evil!!

bobbarker31 · Post by **bobbarker31** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 11:58 am

fireadept wrote:Base anime religion of real religion, sorry if i wasnt clear, religion is not something to really mess with, think of the wars its caused and will caused. Religion has a heavy power and should be handled with people who know not to offend people needlessly.

People caused the wars. That happens whenever you have any human organization that gains the power to influence. That can happen with religion, governments, or your local 4H Club.

It is a humanist fallacy to think that if they get rid of the trappings of religion and these things won't happen. People will be people, and something else will guide them to the actions that they have now.

HeavyMetal · Post by **HeavyMetal** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:19 am

Sorry, gone for awhile.

fireadept

Base anime religion of real religion, sorry if I wasnt clear, religion is not something to really mess with, think of the wars its caused and will caused. Religion has a heavy power and should be handled with people who know not to offend people needlessly.

Like I said if you try to tip toe around everyone’s sensibilities you will never have any fun with a G rated life. Strife may bring out the worst in humanity, but it also brings out the best. To an extent humans need chaos and conflict to reach their potential.

Bobbarker31 put it quite well. Though I would not say power is not innately evil. That would be the human element of making mistakes. At least from a point of view.

Ignoring problems or avoiding issues doesn’t make them go away. Plus like EmiLang said religion makes a fantasy world believable.

I personally don’t give a flying shit if people curse my values or anything I find important to the grave. (Things like metal and making fun of anything for a laugh, self included.) So along as they don’t force me to be like them they can say and do whatever the hell they want. Of course anyone that crosses that line steps up for an ass kicking.

People are going to mess with anything and everything. Why? Because we can.

asrrin29

I am very surprised that so many people think Evangelion is based off of christian mythology. most of the symbolism in it are direct references to Jewish Mystisim and the Kabalah(SP?). The whole Idea of Lilith, Adam's first wife, is a story from jewish mystisim and not christianity. Seeing as how the two releigions are so heavly intertwined with eachother however, it is easy to see why it gets so confused, but correct me if I am wrong, there are no references in Eva from the new Testament. (alright, maybe the Lance of Loginus, but anything after the death of Christ still stands

True enough, but there are a few references. They're both lumped together half the time anyway.
Christianity does stem from Judaism after all. The ten commandments so often used in Christianity were given to Moses. In fact right up until Mary and Joseph all the names in the Bible are quite Jewish. Old testament accompanied by the new testament etc.

Why was the incest in the Bible brought up anyway?
BasharOfTheAges is actually right though. In the past it was actually expected that if family members began to grow to old to attract a partner then they would arrange a marriage with a cousin or other moderately distant relative. Also if there were a death in the family that left a widow. I think Edgar Allen Poe married his wife that way actually. Greek/Roman history is fairly full of this as well.

Still creepy. When you grow up with people Platonically seeing them any other way would just seem abrasive.

As for EVA and Christianity, most end of the world scenarios make reference to some religion at least in passing. Science alone does not make for a very interesting end of the world story. Science tends to say the star will die or nova and its all gameover. Of course there are always meteors, floods, and pollutants, as well. From what I hear the end of the world as described by Hinduism fairly accurately describes a nova star. But I did not read it myself, so I don’t know.

The Origonal Head Hunter · Post by **The Origonal Head Hunter** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:08 am

If you want to see a manga that really messes with religon go read a manga called "Preist" if you aren't that informed on the basic principles of the Bible and start to question everything that we thought we knew you wouldn't be the first.